The present invention relates to conveyors and more particularly to diverter mechanisms for selectively diverting articles traveling on one conveyor onto an intersecting conveyor.
A variety of diverting mechanisms for transferring articles from one conveyor onto an intersecting conveyor is known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,138,238 issued on June 23, 1964 to M. J. DeGood et al. and assigned to the present assignee is typical. In this system, a single row of power driven wheels is movable between inoperative and operative positions to engage an article traveling along the main conveyor and diverted onto a stub conveyor at an acute angle. In this prior art, a single row of wheels is provided for the diverting function and is powered by and driven at the same speed as the main conveyor. Other well known diverting mechanisms include several rows of similarly skewed wheels also driven at the same speed as the main conveyor.
Such diverting mechanisms apparently operate satisfactorily for average speed conveyors (i.e., 80 to 100 feet per minute) where the angle of diverting is an acute angle. In high speed applications where the conveyor may be operating as high as 500 feet per minute or more and/or where the articles are diverted at right angles to the main conveyor, the operation of such prior art systems has not proven successful. The failure to provide the desired diverting under such circumstances is in part due to the fact that the diverting wheels are driven at the same speed as the main conveyor as well as the inability of such systems to rapidly and significantly change the direction of motion of the articles within the divert area.